La Mettrie: Machine Man and Other Writings

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

Cambridge University Press, Apr 18, 1996 - Philosophy - 179 pages

Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-51), author of Man a Machine (1747), was the most uncompromising of the materialists of the eighteenth century, and the provocative title of his work ensured it a succès de scandale in his own time. This fully annotated edition presents a new English translation of the text together with the most important of La Mettrie's other philosophical works, translated into English for the first time. Ann Thomson's introduction examines his aims and the scandalous moral consequences which he drew from his materialism.

Contents

• Foreword: vii
• Introduction: ix
• Chronology: xxvii
• Further reading: xxix
• Machine Man: 1
• Treatise on the Soul: 41
• Man as Plant: 75
• The System of Epicurus: 89
• AntiSeneca or the Sovereign Good: 117
• Preliminary Discourse: 145
• Index: 174

About the author

Ann Thomas is Curator of the Photographs Collection at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Among her books are "No Man's Land: The Photography of Lynne Cohen; Beauty of Another Order", which won the Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award in 1998; and "Lisette Model".

Bibliographic information

• Title: La Mettrie: Machine Man and Other Writings; Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy
• Author: Julien Offray de La Mettrie
• Editor: Ann Thomson
• Edition: annotated
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1996
• ISBN: 0521478499, 9780521478496
• Length: 179 pages
• Subjects: Philosophy / General; Philosophy / History & Surveys / Modern